Inheritance and succession

Lawyers need one term that covers both a will and a contract of inheritance, and German builds it with a piece of grammar that survives only in fixed phrases: die Verfügung von Todes wegen. The frame is von … wegen wrapped round a bare genitive, with no article and no adjective in between, so Todes is simply the genitive of der Tod, frozen in place. The same mould gives von Amts wegen, done by an authority on its own initiative, and von Rechts wegen, by rights. It cannot be rebuilt as wegen des Todes: that is ordinary causal German and means because of the death. The phrase answers the Latin mortis causa, and its partner is unter Lebenden, for what takes effect while both sides are alive — which is why a gift can be eine Schenkung unter Lebenden or a Schenkung von Todes wegen.